teacher's side

this week, i worked on redoing my art website, which took up a lot of time.

today, i went to “writing” workshop again. i was talking to another student during class and ended up on the topic of jj’s school. the teacher joined in and we continued the conversation during break. she said that the problem in most of the public schools now, was that the kids were out of control. i have heard this from other sources too, that there is a serious discipline problem in the public schools. she blamed the lax parents. it seems universal that middle school is particularly difficult. kids are dealing with changing bodies and hormones and experimenting with more independence. i told her that our school was semi private. she landed directly on one point that was of concern to me. there is plenty of old fashioned snobbery in paris and there seems to be a population in the school of very rich, entitled, families. i’m sure it’s similar to some manhattan private schools. of course, this doesn’t mean jj will be influenced by these attitudes, especially since she is not part of that demographic. anyway, the teacher

is coming from the teacher side of things so she had some stories of bad parents.

story 1: the long established method for communication between teachers and parent is the carnet, a special notebook for each student with records of test grades etc. one page is specifically for the teacher to make comments and the parent must sign after it to acknowledge that they have seen it. one parent had signed all of the spaces in the right column before there were any comments.

story 2: one teacher arranged to meet a parent and the student to discuss a problem. as they sat down together, the parent said something like “this better be worth it, because my time is valuable. i earn 3 times what you earn”. the teacher said, “end of discussion, get out.” so the parent went to complain to the principal that the teacher had called him in, but then refused to talk to him. the principal was surprised and said, “she is a very good and reasonable teacher. what did you say to her?” he repeated his statement at which point the principal told him to get out. of course, the teachers’ complaints have to do with the lack of respect for their profession.

jj told me about one kid in her grade who lives in his own apartment. it is upstairs from his parents apt. he is a very particular sort of kid too. he comes to school in a suit and with a briefcase. he has all kinds of fancy movie making equipment. while all the other kids are reprimanded for the smallest infraction, this kid can just stand up in class and start setting up and using his equipment. jj said that she saw a film he had made and it was really good and really professional.

i know a dog-dad (he has a beagle, i met him in the champs de mars), an american, retired editor at intl herald tribune. he has 2 sons who went to the school. he said that when they were there, they weren’t very happy, but they got an excellent education and got into very good american colleges. he asked them for me, how they felt about the school and the teachers. they said it wasn’t the teachers they had a problem with as much as the french kids. they said they were very spoiled and entitled. however, they said that the kids in the international program were much nicer.

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